CHULA VISTA  Six times Beth Yturralde has taken home a puppy and given it all the love she has in her heart.

Each time the dog has become part of her family.

After about 16 months, she has given each away and felt her heart break.

As a puppy raiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind, it’s a continuous cycle of joy and sadness for Yturralde, a team leader who not only raises dogs but oversees the training of several others who raise the pups, too.

“It’s never easy,” says Yturralde, 53, who’s worked six years for the local Praise for Paws group that raises the puppies for the national Guide Dogs for the Blind. “I’ve never seen anything like it where I’ve seen a grown man just bawling his eyes out.”

Yet Yturralde and others — all volunteers (who even pay for food and dog toys) — do it because they know they’re improving the lives of others.

After their time with the puppy raisers, the dogs — Labs, golden retrievers or Lab-golden mixes — go to a facility in the Bay Area where they receive about four months of specific training to become guide dogs and are paired with the people who need them.

Yturralde and the other puppy raisers do none of that specific training. Their role is to socialize the dogs and get them comfortable with all situations.

The dogs, who wear vests to signify they’re in training, go to malls, public events and even fire stations so they can be exposed to sirens and fire trucks. The dogs also are exposed to motorcycles, umbrellas, rolling trash cans, children, other dogs and people with hats and facial hair — anyone or anything that might spook them.

In May, she started the cycle again, getting Puppy No. 7, a yellow Labrador named Brent. It will be hard to give up Brent, too, but she says the heartbreak is worth it.

Once, when she was walking one of her dogs in the parking lot at the Otay Ranch Town Center, a man approached her.

“He said, ‘I just want to thank you for what you’re doing,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘My baby was born yesterday blind, and I know that someday I will be using your services.’ It’s gut-wrenching, you know, but it kind of tells you you’re doing the right thing.”